Sometimes I can’t take fashun seriously. When I realized that “I’m just gonna chill at home” clothing had become street style/fashion week fashionable, I could do nothing more than roll my eyes and wonder how many designers had taken well advantage of the situation by charging upwards of $100 for something that probably cost $2.34 to make.

I dig the lazy, comfortable look as much as the next mom/tomboy (momboy? Can we make that a thing? Let’s make that a thing), but COME THE FUCK ON.

I balked when I saw this one for $70, but that pales in comparison to the Saint Laurent Paris offering. Can we talk about this $675 SLP sweatshirt for a second? Because I have questions…

Did Hanes go out of business? Are fashion people unaware that this exists for $15 in nearly every Target everywhere? They probably aren’t trimmed in grosgrain ribbon, but that looks weird anyway. Is it the V patch in the front? We’re paying Louboutin prices for V patches on plain cotton fleece sweatshirts? You can find that at screen printing & embroidery shops. See? NOT $675. Not even $100.

I think Yoko Ono is either trolling the fashion world or trying to kill me softly with her men’s collection for Opening Ceremony. With each successive scroll down the page, item after item after item brings me closer to calling upon Francis Conroy as the Dark Angel to come and collect my soul. Maybe this is her way of spreading holiday cheer to the world by way of WTFs. Maybe.

Each of these items was once a humble 40 year old line drawing that, in decades past, was meant for John Lennon to wear. And since it IS the season of giving (and because I haven’t done one of these in a dog’s age), I have one question for the group:

What would you be most delighted to serve up under your tree / menorah / kinara / Festivus pole for your favorite man?

I’m sure this was all based on actual research (because we need to fund worthy research projects in this economy), and that the title of the article itself was meant to generate “discussion,” but damn. I’ve said it once and I will say it again:

BLACK PEOPLE ARE NOT A MONOLITH.

I managed to make it to the end of the article where a bail-out attempt is made in the “of course this isn’t all black people” vein.

Ahh, redemption…

I’m still not sure whether this is a surreptitious attempt to talk about class differences in America or if the writer really, REALLY thinks that what *some* black folks have to say on Twitter is THAT interesting…then again, I don’t usually participate in trending topics or do “the Twitter” into the wee hours of the morning, so what do I know?

Either way, I’ve taken the graphic used for the article, a brown bird holding a blackberry and wearing a fitted baseball cap, and altered it a few times over. I figure that if Slate and the world are really that intrigued (and because Twitter can’t provide empirical data on who is who), those individuals who want to be identified as a black person using Twitter should be able to do so with a brown bird wearing a fitted cap in a color that best represents them.

UPDATE: I seem to have gotten a bit carried away…birds now available in more than fitted caps! ON SPINNING RIMS EVEN!!

Feel free to use these at will. Need a larger file? Email me.

And since I got chewed out by night’s end, here is one for my lighter skinned peeps:

Annnnnnnnnnnnnd more from today…I’m stopping after this, I promise. These are the special requests that I pledged to fulfill. If I didn’t get to yours, I am sorry…

UPDATE 8/12: I can’t believe I’m still making these…

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I’m laughing with a supreme side-eye on my face (a la Latifah):

Just to be clear, I’m not crying racism…I just think this piece could have been thought through a bit more…or written in a style that wasn’t trying to provoke a response…like this one…

Awwwwwwwwww shit.

Well played, Slate. Well played.

Thoughts?

UPDATE: Since this article was based largely on what I believe to be “some BOOLSHYT,” feel free to take a brown bird even if you aren’t…brown. LOL. They are cute.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A post on this…article…that I really enjoyed is over at Black Snob. It’s basically everything I wanted to say, but was too busy to say because I was having way too much fun with Photoshop.

AND ANOTHER UPDATE: my good friend over at Stop It Right Now has contributed a bird. Anyone else who wants to make one, do it and I’ll post it here. =)